I've been dazzled these last couple of years by the new road planners' favourite thing of the Portuguese roundabout. There were never that many of them Portugal, and now there are ten in the space of nine kilometres on my little home stretch of the EN10.  While they were digging up the road to make the new layouts, it was a death trap, not a metre without a pothole of death, but now that the work is done, the roundabouts do help to calm the traffic... of course, in some places there should be roundabouts and aren't any and in some places the roundabouts are a pain and a bit pointless, but I'm coming round to this more rounded-out road of ours.

BUT.  BUT.  Would SOMEONE (oh, I dunno, how much would a short infomercial by the gov.pt cost?), PLEASE, instruct the 80% of Portuguese drivers who don't think it necessary to touch the little stick at the side of their steering wheel on how to use those little blinky-blinky orange lights on the sides of their cars when they are going right or doubling back on one of the roundy-roundy things before someone gets SQUISHED .... it's turning me into a shouty-shouty sweary-sweary monster.

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written by mintypoppet , November 18, 2009

I remember them installing one in Loulé, where people kept stopping on the roundabout to let other people on... maybe they need a public service announcement on how to use roundybouts?

That said, it isn't much better in the UK. We need billboards on the middle of the roundybout that say 'Give way to the right and USE YOUR BLOODY INDICATORS.' That might help.

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written by ana , November 19, 2009

Silly, silly Lucy.

The blinky-blinky things are not used for such trivial matters as indicating which way you're going in a roundabout or (the tought of it!) if you're changing lanes.

They are a powerful magical tool that you switch on when you're leaving your car in the middle of the road because that way it is misteriously no longer impeding the progress of every car and most "peões" in the neighbourhood.

Don't you know anything?